Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding
is a difficult novel to categorize. Most
obviously, as can be judged by its title, it is a baseball novel. But it is also Chad Harbach’s debut
novel. And it is a gay novel…a literary
novel…a coming-of-age novel. Logically, the next question about the book
becomes: is it good at any of these things?
Well, considering that the novel is also one of 2011’s most-hyped books,
I have to give a qualified yes as answer to the question of whether the novel
is any good – qualified because, despite what it accomplishes, I do not believe that it lives up to all of the hype.

The novel focuses on several characters associated with
Westish College, a tiny liberal arts school located in northern Wisconsin. Mike
Schwartz is the baseball team’s catcher and acknowledged leader who stumbles
upon a high school shortstop with great fielding skills and an uncanny work
ethic. Schwartz decides that this young
man, one Henry Skrimshander, would be a perfect fit for Westish and manages to
recruit him for the school. Already on
the team is Owen Dunne, a light-skinned black player who just happens to be
Henry’s gay roommate.

Westish is a strange little school, but many of those who
pass through it form strong emotional bonds to the place. Its president, Guert Affenlight, for
instance, has given up a position at Harvard University in order to come back
to Wisconsin to head his alma mater, and his daughter Pella will seek shelter
there upon the breakup of her marriage.

Chad Harbach

At the heart of the story is Henry’s run at a record setting
number of errorless games at shortstop – a record currently owned by his
boyhood idol Aparicio Rodriguez. As the
record setting game approaches, Henry begins to think too much about the streak
and very suddenly develops a case of Steve Blass disease. (Avid baseball fans will remember Blass as
the Pittsburg Pirate pitcher that inexplicably lost his ability to throw a
baseball accurately and, as a consequence, was forced to retire from the game.) Henry’s personal unraveling coincides, and
perhaps influences, a similar unraveling of the lives of those closest to him:
Guert, Mike, Owen, and Pella.

Chad Harbach’s writing often reminds of the novels of John
Irving. Harbach’s love, and knowledge,
of baseball is reminiscent of Irving’s relationship to college wrestling. Both writers delight in strangely-named
oddball characters, and both are willing to use whatever number of pages it
takes to explore fully the story they want to tell (517 pages, in this case).
Although The Art of Fielding works
well, it does not manage to live up to the huge amount of pre-publication hype
it generated. Building the expectations
of readers to an unreasonable level is a dangerous game – and The Art of Fielding suffers the consequences.

Joel, I still believe the book was terribly over-hyped but I think it is an interesting one that manages to crack my top 10 fiction list to this point. After hearing Harbach speak about the book, I think he also benefitted from more industry connections than most first-timers could expect. He's kind of a publishing mini-nsider despite this being his first novel.

He was one of co-founders of n+1, right? So, yeah, he had the credentials to get noticed. And once a publisher had invested in him, of course they were going to (over-)hype him. But, I'm glad to see a first-timer doing well. Check out Eric's take if you haven't already.

That's right, Joel. He spoke about his connection to the magazine and how it helped him get a foot in a few doors. But he said he was rejected by seven of the eight agents he submitted his manuscript to...but it sure didn't hurt to have some name recognition coming into the process.

I did see Eric's thoughts, and pretty much agree with him. He did seem more concerned than I was about the book's realism, or lack of it. I eventually came to read the book more as a fable of sorts than a realistic novel.

A fable? I actually like the sound of that. I may end up reading it in the near future after all. By the way, I noted that Saturday is #2 on your list. If you haven't yet read McEwan's The Child in Time, give it a go. I think it's my favorite of his.

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Favorite Quote of the Moment

"Within arm's reach were so many sublime minds - she could awaken them off the shelf (no matter the hour, they were more alert than she), bid them start, and encounter a soul fitted with perceptions like hers, only sharper. - Tooly of The Rise & Fall of Great Powers, page 44, as she opens the door of her bookshop in the middle of the night